John Baldessari: Pure Beauty

British artists Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden reflect on the beginnings of conceptual art group Art & Language

The Los Angeles-based artist John Baldessari (born 1931) made his name as a pioneer of conceptual art in the 1960s with his text and image paintings. After cremating most of the work he had produced between 1953 and 1966, he began to make photographic works, often incorporating film stills, as well as videos, many of which have become icons. At the forefront of his imagery has been an interest in written and visual language, and his status as a teacher is legendary. But where did it all come from? Here, he talks to the curator of Tate Modern’s forthcoming retrospective of his work.

The American artist John Baldessari has influenced several generations of younger artists, and has, since the 1960s, consistently renegotiated his own working practice – from his earlier text paintings to his reworkings of old film stills and the commissioning of paintings made by amateur artists to his specifications. Christopher Miles pays him a visit.

The Gallery of Lost Art is an immersive, online exhibition that tells the fascinating stories of artworks that have disappeared. Each week, a new story of loss is added, and the evidence presented for examination

Conceptual art is art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.